


What's Past is Prologue

by LadyRoxie



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, Phrack hits a wall, Phryne opens up, Pretty intense angst, Recollection of abuse, Recollection of violence, Where do we go from here?, non-con, trust me - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-09-02 11:37:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8666083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyRoxie/pseuds/LadyRoxie
Summary: Phryne and Jack reach a tipping point, and certain revelations need to be made. But they might change everything.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Erm... Yes, it's kinda heavy, but so is love. I'm sorry... I know, it's... whatever. I just figured I'd post it anyway. eep. Not sure yet if there's a second... more uplifting... chapter needed. As always, so many thanks for reading. xxx

“It was a good plan, Jack, just, well, not optimally executed!” Phryne Fisher flounced into the guest chair in the Inspector's office, pulling off her canvas hat and running a gloved hand over her hair. 

“It was a terrible plan, especially badly executed, and you should have told me you were going to the bar in the first place!”

Jack threw his coat on the rack, then went to stand by the bookcase behind his desk, steadying himself with one hand. He scrubbed the other over his drawn face before continuing. 

“You could have been killed, Phryne.” His voice was suddenly quiet and weary, and Phryne wished he had stayed angry. This was worse. 

“I wasn't though, was I,” she said. “It was barely a scratch.” She rubbed her bandaged ribs gingerly without looking at him.

“Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you call, even... even just to let me know where you'd be, even if you didn't want my help?” 

She settled back in her chair, fiddling with the buttons on her coat. 

“Because I knew if I did... you'd have come.”

Jack's words were sharp. “You're right. I would.”

She'd gone to the dockside bar, intending to find a dark corner to observe their chief suspect inconspicuously, hoping to catch him trolling for one of the young boys who offered their particular services to the sailors and dock men who frequented the place. If she caught him in the act of soliciting, they could at least tie him to the trade, and Jack would have reason to bring him in. She thought she could blend in, go unnoticed, but thought Jack would stand out like a copper from miles away. 

It wasn't supposed to be dangerous. 

She hadn't counted on the fact that their man, a thug and a brute named Ed Coulton, recognized her from the newspaper. He'd made her the minute he'd seen her, and when she'd stepped into the back corridor to see if any of the stock rooms had a salacious dual purpose, he followed her. If an old regular hadn't chosen that moment to relieve himself in the alley out back where Coulton had dragged her, Phryne would have been lucky to make it out alive. 

And if Jack had been there? She knew he was right, and she'd underestimated him. Again.

She was pulled from her reverie by movement. Jack sat down heavily in his worn chair, his hands coming to rest in his lap, his fingers continuing to worry.

“I don't know if I can do this anymore.” His voice was heavy.

“Jack?”

“You say we're partners. You demand that I let you in-” Phryne sat forward and opened her mouth to rebut, but the sadness in Jack's gaze silenced her before she spoke.

“- and I do. I do because... Dammit, Phryne, because it's better. It's better for the cases, and for the victims, and...”

“And for us?” Her voice was soft, but her eyes were steady and open.

Jack looked down at his desk, and nodded. 

“I think so,” he said.

“I do too, Jack. We're better together.”

Jack's head shot up and anger flashed again in his eyes.

“Then why do you shut me out? Why do you continue to manoeuvre yourself with no regard for our partnership, not to mention your own personal safety? Jesus, Phryne, how can we be a team if you leave me out in the cold? You keep me at arms length until it suits you... That's not a team! That's...” Jack struggled to find the word.

“Using you.”

Jack's mouth was open, midway through a thought he never finished, and a lock of hair had fallen over his furrowed forehead. His voice, when he found it, was rough.

“Yes.”

Phryne looked over at him. The hollows of his cheeks seemed deeper than usual, his mouth a thinner line. His hair had loosened from its pomade; she suddenly remembered that he hadn't had his hat when he'd leaped out of the police car at the docks, his face a mask of taut anxiety until her shallow jokes had let him know she was more or less alright. He must have flown out of the station when he got the call from the bartender and left it behind.

Jack studied his restless hands before sitting back and running his fingers through his hair.

“It's late, Miss Fisher.”

She nodded. “Drive me home, Jack?”

The veiled pain she saw in his blue eyes when he looked up at her tightened the knot that had been forming in her gut. She wanted to argue. She wanted to rail. She wanted to throw a few pithy words into the air between them to put everything back in balance. “It's my own life,” and “I can look after myself”, and “nothing serious happened anyway”, (and “ _I do trust you_ ”...) but her throat felt tight and none of the words would come. 

She had hurt him. And not because she was reckless, not because she was injured, or at least, not exclusively. She had shut him out. 

As a girl, Phryne was taller than a lot of the scruffy boys in the neighbourhood, at least until they were 12 or 13. She had scrapped with the toughest boys in Collingwood, and nearly always came out better off than her opponent. She'd learned early on that if the kid was smaller, even if he was heavy and strong, she could hold him away simply by anchoring her palm on his forehead and locking her arm straight. The boy would swing, and punch, and holler like a stuck pig, and she'd laugh, leaning her wiry body away, and knowing she had him beat. 

As the boys got bigger, she learned other ways to be evasive. It was her greatest strength – she was quick, she could think on her feet, and she knew every way there was to keep out of someone's grasp. Even then, she'd understood that if she got too close, if she got caught, she'd get hurt.

Now, her breath hitched as she stood too quickly, forgetting about her bandaged ribs. She caught the arm of the chair and leaned on it for a moment, a quick rush of air escaping her lips. 

“Phryne?” Jack's hand was suddenly at her back, and she felt the warmth of it through her thin coat. “Jesus. You should be in bed.”

She straightened slightly and turned her head, her lips already forming the flippant invitation, but she bit it back. It wasn't the time.

“You might be right, Inspector.”

Jack helped her into the car, and neither spoke on the way to Wardlow. 

Phryne stared out the window at the darkened city, feeling like it was unreachable tonight somehow. She shifted carefully in her seat, trying to compensate for the feeling of discomfort stretching over her, a feeling which had nothing whatsoever to do with her scrapes and bruises. 

Outside, a young couple leaned into each other under the pool of light from a dim streetlamp, taking advantage of the near-empty street to kiss. The woman's arms came up and wrapped around her lover's neck and she laughed. Normally, a scene like that would have delighted Phryne; tonight it summoned ghosts.

René had never shied away from demonstrating his attraction to her. He was passionate in private; he was equally so in the midst of their friends, at the local café, or on the streets of Montparnasse. It was a different time, a wholly different place, and barriers were being wilfully broken all around, with relish and delight. Phryne had loved the heady feelings of arousal and power that came from displaying her body, first, and her lust, eventually, in relative public. 

But it didn't take long for things to turn darker. A caressing hand on her thigh at a party became a bruising clutch at her hip when she tried to rise. A sensual trail of fingers up her bare arm ended in his paint-stained fingers locked around her wrists like darbys as she tried to turn away from his tongue.

And eventually, he barely hid anything. No one asked about the bruises, the occasional split lip, the tremor in her hands, because no one wondered at all. They knew. Once in a while, they'd offer a brief asylum, a respite for an evening, “ _Venez, ma chèrie, soupez avec nous! Et si vous voulez rester...._ ” She never did. 

The horror wasn't that he was cruel; she had known cruel men her whole life. The horror was that she let him be.

She had lost the thing that had kept her whole, kept her alive, kept her from being, perhaps, another Janey. She'd let someone in.

Phryne shivered in the car, pulling her flimsy scarf up to her chin. She hadn't been paying attention; the car pulled up in front of her home, and she saw the soft glow of lights from the windows.

Jack got out and opened her door, closing it again wordlessly and steering her up the path. She wondered if he would stay; wondered if she wanted him to. Perhaps surprisingly, she found she did. But the words wouldn't come, once again. 

Dot opened the front door as they approached, her face telegraphing her concern. Phryne had asked Mac to telephone, and Mac had spoken to Mr. Butler once she'd seen to Phryne's injuries. Phryne knew Dot would be worried, and wished she felt the strength to put up a defence against her fussing. 

“Miss Phryne! Hello, Inspector, thank you for bringing her home.” Dot ushered them in, bustling around Phryne, relieving her of coat, hat, gloves and handbag. Jack hung his hat and coat on their familiar hooks on the hat tree; out of habit or choice, Phryne didn't know.

“I was so worried, Miss.” Dot hugged her arms to herself, and Jack wondered briefly if it was because she couldn't hug Phryne.

Phryne gave her a reassuring smile. “I'm absolutely fine, Dot. Nothing a hot bath and a good lie-in won't fix!”

Dot smiled thinly. “Would you like me to run a bath, Miss, or would you and the Inspector like something to eat first? For you, I mean! The bath...that is.” Dot blushed furiously, and shifted on her feet. Jack suppressed a smile in spite of himself, and chose to amble into the parlour rather than make it worse.

“A bath would be lovely, Dot, maybe after a little supper. It appears getting accosted by a sadist piques the appetite...”

Dot gave a tiny, grateful curtsy and disappeared into the back of the house. In truth, Phryne wasn't the least bit hungry, but Jack was more likely to stay if there was food, and that suddenly meant a great deal.

She found him in his usual place at the mantel, studying one of a pair of sculptures she had recently placed there. 

Without asking, she walked to the drinks cart and poured two whiskeys before coming to stand with him by the fire.

“These are beautiful,” said Jack, one long finger coming out to trace down the bird's elegant tail of red amber. 

“I thought so,” Phryne handed him a glass, and turned her eyes to the luminous little carving. “Qing dynasty, and very rare, I'm lead to believe.”

Jack nodded, finding his mouth had gone dry at the attempt at small talk. 

Just then, Mr. Butler entered carrying a tray of sandwiches. He set the tray on a low table in front of the chaise, setting two linen napkins beside it. 

“Thank you, Mr. B.. Would you be so kind as to close the parlour doors on your way out?”

“Yes Miss,” the older man responded with a kind nod. Jack waited until the doors slipped shut before speaking.

“Phryne, about tonight...” Jack began. He hadn't touched his drink, and looked stilted and uncomfortable. 

“No, wait. Please, Jack, just... I know I ought to have told you. I was... well if not reckless then mistaken.”

Jack's frown told her he suspected this was more patronizing peace-making than truth. He nodded grimly and set his glass on the mantel.

“It's been a long day, Miss Fisher. Thank you for the drink.” He avoided her eyes as he patted his trouser pockets and walked towards the parlour doors. 

“Jack, I'm sorry.” 

He paused, his head down as if trying to steal a glance back at her in spite of himself. 

“I'm not sure I can continue like this, Phryne. It's just too hard. I would... I would do anything for you.” His head hung low, and Phryne watched his broad chest expand and contract under his jacket, under his layers, under his armour. 

“I know.” Her jaw tightened as she heard the break in her voice. 

The knot that had been tightening in her belly felt like it was forcing its way up her throat, and she swallowed thickly. There was something she'd never told him; had never wanted to. But it suddenly felt like the one thing Jack needed to know.

A wave of fear broke over her. They wouldn't be the same people to each other after she did. In his eyes, she wouldn't be the same to him, and that scared her more than any knife, any gun, any wound. 

And yet here they were.

“I need to tell you something,” she said quietly. Jack turned, his eyes meeting hers full of softness and hurt.

“Phryne you don't owe-” She cut him off, her eyes squeezing shut for a moment and her voice rising.

“I do, Jack. I do owe you this.” She steadied herself with a breath. “No one more than you.”

Jack licked his lips nervously, and steeled himself for what he was sure was coming. She wasn't going to continue with him, couldn't stay, couldn't love him. God, he'd been a fool. Even when he'd tried to protect himself from loving her, he'd known it was useless, and he'd relished even that. In spite of himself, a part of him had actually believed he'd seen his own feelings reflected back at him a thousand times, a hundred different ways, and thought that if he stayed, endured the journey, that they would end up in the one place they seemed always to be heading. Together.

Now she was going to end that fantasy, and the knowledge made him sick to his stomach. His frantic mind thought if he left now, he could choose to go on blindly, living in the dream of “maybe” and “one day”, rather than have to be crushed under “not you” and “never”. He clenched his hands into fists at his side, and tried to anchor his feet in the thick carpet beneath him.

He had been fooling himself for so long, it had felt real. But life didn't work that way; not his, anyway. He could maybe learn to be grateful for what they had had, for the life and colour and excitement she'd brought back into his life. And if that disappeared with her, well, perhaps it was for the best. He owed her this, to be there now, to let her extricate herself however she needed to. How he broke apart later would be his own burden.

He met her eyes, and nodded, though he couldn't find words to speak.

Phryne silently offered him a seat, gesturing the space between them. After a moment, he lowered himself to a chair, and she passed him his abandoned glass. She curled into the chaise opposite, wincing as she felt her bruised ribs when she tried to pull her legs up beneath her.

The flash of pain on her face cut through Jack's own turmoil and he sat forward with one hand reaching out before he could stop himself. 

_Goddammit, man, she doesn’t need your help. She doesn't need you._

He flushed under his collar, a sense of panic rising in his chest. Breathe, he told himself. Breathe. Be a soldier. 

After a deep drink of her whiskey, Phryne spoke, her delicate fingers tracing the cuts on the crystal tumbler. 

“I thought about it, you know. Calling you tonight.” Her voice was soft and low.

Jack remained still, his glass balanced in his large hand.

“I always do, actually. Well, mostly. And I imagine, it appears that I choose not to because I'm selfish and reckless and don't believe I need you.” 

Jack wished he could disagree, but he couldn't. She saw it in his face, and gave him a small, sad smile.

“Well I am selfish. And I am reckless – _sometimes_ – ...”

Jack found he couldn't keep looking at her, not for this part. Heat pricked the back of his eyes and he set his glass carefully on the small table beside him.

“But I do need you, Jack. And that terrifies me.” When he looked up, her face was flushed beyond the warmth from the fire, and her eyes were large with emotion and tears.

“I swore, Jack, I swore to myself were that I would never be beholding to anyone again, never need anyone else for anything, and that I would live my life exactly as I wanted to. I made those promises amongst the ashes of my self, like a phoenix. 

“I made them when I recovered myself. I remade myself, rediscovered who I was and I promised never to let anything threaten my wholeness again. I had been... broken.” She swept a hand over her cheek and bit her lip in thought for a moment.

“I believed I was in love, once. Just once. I would have died for him; he'd have had only to ask. I willingly gave him my body, and my soul, and in the end he broke me with my own pieces.”

Jack realized he was holding his breath, the bile in his throat threatening to choke him. He clenched his teeth a few times, and took a long sip of his drink.

He had known René had been cruel. He had known he was responsible for hurting Phryne in profound ways. But he'd resisted knowing – if he was honest with himself, he'd pushed the questions out of his mind – what the man had done to her. Suddenly the realization that he had no idea how she'd been hurt threatened to crush him. He had gleaned that the relationship had been tempestuous ( _what one with Phryne Fisher wouldn't be?_ ), and that she'd been hurt by him, but that could mean many things.

Jack had always imagined her father to be primarily responsible for Phryne's determination to never be dominated or controlled by a man, but the horrific possibility that she had been the victim of abuse at the hands of a lover, as well as her father, dawned on him with a crash.

Jack hoped he was a good man, and he knew he was a good police officer. Over his career, he had encountered more cases of abuse than he could ever possibly recount. Physical, mental, emotional... anyway a woman or a child could be cowed and punished and wounded, he had seen, and the awareness of it had carved out a part of his heart that held the burden when it needed holding, but locked it away when it was out of his sight. It was too much pain, too much unfairness, too many women brutalized by men who felt they existed solely for them to invalidate. 

He'd seen fierce women fight back, and seen women whose eyes had gone dead at the core when their fight finally left them. He lost sleep over each one. He did anything and everything in his power to get them to safety, and to punish the abusers with everything the law could wield, but all too often, all he could do was precious more than nothing. Mostly, he was a witness. He hoped that was worth something. 

But Jack realized, now, that he hadn't wanted to know those things about this woman. He hadn't wanted to know how she was hurt because that would mean not just opening that dark place inside his heart, but smashing the door off its hinges. 

He knew how hard it would be for her to tell him – to tell anyone – the truth about René, because he knew her; his fierce, proud, private, Phryne. 

And now she wanted to tell him. 

“Before I go on, Jack, I need to say this. I'm not a victim, I'm not to be kid-gloved or coddled or God-knows what else. I am still me, and I will not suffer pity, not from anyone.” Her eyes flashed as they met his, but Jack's held only a world of strength. It made her lose her place for a minute, stumbling over her next thought. She had known this would be difficult for him; she knew him. But she had expected the decency and kindness that was intrinsic to Jack to turn to the kind of sympathy that belittled, that announced a difference between “me” and “them”. For now though, she was grateful to see a man who once again was meeting her exactly where she was. 

“The first time he hit me,” Phryne saw Jack's jaw tighten out of the corner of her eye, but continued. “I had come a few minutes late to the café where we ate most nights. I had been sitting for Pierre Sarcelle, and René had been getting more and more possessive; he wanted me to model for no one else but him. I admit,” she said, swirling the liquid in her glass, “I liked it. I liked being needed that badly, being wanted completely and constantly. He was passionate and strong and beautiful and made me feel all those things and more.

“I had never experienced lust, sex, like that in my life. He wanted me always, and so intensely it took my breath away.”

Jack felt the pounding of his heart inside his clothes, confusing emotions warring in his veins. He was ashamed that his thoughts went instantly to wanting her, even as she sat a few feet away describing a kind of undoing he found despicable. 

He struggled to force his mind back to the one thing he knew above all, which was that he was her friend, her partner, and he could bear witness to this for her. 

Phryne's eyes flickered over his, and she continued.

“I was happy, I thought. I had no contact with my parents, the war was over, and I was caught up in the _joie-de-vivre_ that was Paris after the War. And I thought I was in love. 

“That first time, he kissed me in the alley behind the cafe, ran his hands over my body and thrust his hips against me. And then he slapped me across the face so hard it split my lip. I can still taste the blood.”

Jack swallowed, his ears hot. 

“I thought, at first... well, for a long time, I believed it meant he loved me. I was his world, he said, the only one who understood him. I made him feel so much, so intensely, it was beyond his control... He would be remorseful, lavishing me with tenderness and passion after he'd been rough. And I believed him.”

Her eyes were pale and faraway as she spoke. After a pause, she blinked and looked back at her hands.

“It got worse, of course. A slap across the face turned into a hand at my throat. An arm around my shoulders at the door became hands that held my wrists until his fingernails made me bleed. He once broke my nose, and I nearly left him then, but a week later he came back on his knees, and wept with his head in my lap, and I left my train ticket on the bureau as I let him take me to bed.” Her voice was almost inaudible. 

“You were in Paris, Jack, before coming home, weren't you?”

Jack cleared his throat and nodded. “I was, though I confess I didn't see much, or if I did, I can't recall. I wasn't myself,” he added with an apologetic smile.

“None of us was,” Phryne said softly. “One of my favourite things to do on Sunday mornings was to visit the _Marche aux Oiseaux_ ,” Phryne registered Jack's look of momentary confusion, “The bird market,” she smiled. “It's still held, every Sunday morning, in the Carré Louis-Lépine just across the Notre Dame bridge, on the Ile de la Cité. It's just lovely, hundreds of the most beautiful birds – song birds, laying birds, parrots, even owls... The most beautiful plumage you can imagine. I'd slip out of the flat early, and walk down to the Seine, stopping for a café if I could afford one.

“One day, I was in a daze, I suppose, just happy to be surrounded by the colours and the little songs that sounded from the rows and rows of cages. And all of a sudden one caught my ear above all the rest. It didn't take me long to find it, either – a lovely little rainbow lorikeet. There we were, two misplaced Aussies, far from home. She was alone in a wooden cage, no bigger than a breadbox, stacked in a pile with a dozen other cages. She was sitting on her perch, calling the same few notes over and over. I'd never heard a lori make that lovely a sound – you know how cacophonous they can be.”

Jack smiled a little in agreement.

“But not this one. The sound was sad and small, and she repeated it over and over and over. She was all alone, without the flock you always see them a part of, and I'm sure she could barely spread her wings open, let alone fly. Then all of a sudden I was weeping – me, in the middle of the street – because I realized we were the same. She wasn't a bird anymore; part of her was broken. And I was the same.

“I just didn't know how to make it stop... I was hemorrhaging my own soul, and I didn't know how to stop.” 

Jack blinked back the heat in his eyes. He could see the whole scene, see beautiful young Phryne Fisher, see the birds, see her sadness. His arms ached with wanting to comfort her. 

“It didn't have to be about big things, either. Or anything, even. A blouse he decided was too revealing, or not revealing enough. A moment too long spent talking to a friend at the bar. A day when the paint and brushes seemed determined to disobey him. I was afraid all the time. I trembled at the sound of the door handle. I no longer sat and laughed with friends at the sidewalk cafés.” She paused. 

“I think he would have killed me.”

The roiling flame in Jack's belly reached an untenable point, and he stood up, walking to the mantle and staring at the fire through unseeing eyes. If the man weren't already dead, buried in an unmarked grave, Jack realized he'd have killed him, and have shouted to God he was dead. The awareness was a grim discovery.

“Jack,” her soft voice called him back to himself, and he was ashamed. “Jack. I am here, and I am whole. Please stay with me.” It was a plea, as much of one as Phryne Fisher ever made, and he turned back to her, certain she could see every thought and feeling etched across his face.

He stared at her for a moment, and then holding her eyes, moved to sit next to her on the chaise. She gave him a small smile, and dropped her eyes to her lap.

“It was a Tuesday. I remember because the little restaurant where we were to meet friends for dinner was closed Mondays, and we often had fish there on Tuesdays, when it was fresh. I was looking forward to it – sole in browned butter with capers and lemon.... That evening, he came in from the studio, and I could tell he was in a temper. I had pressed his shirts, cleaned the flat, even set my hair in pins the way he loved it. René walked in the door, poured himself a brandy, and accused me of wanting to sleep with our friend, Hugo. It was nonsense, of course; I think even he knew that. And when I protested, he tore off my dress...” Her voice cracked on the last word, and Jack had reached for her hand before he could stop himself. 

Instead of recoiling, she gripped his fingers in both hands and continued.

“He threw me to the floor, and...” Her voice disappeared on the last words. Jack felt his stomach turn.

“Phryne,” Jack whispered, his voice having abandoned him. “Don't. You don't have to-”

She looked up at him with large eyes, shining with tears, but flaring with determination. 

“I do.”

He nodded solemnly, and brought his other hand around hers.

“He knew he had hurt me, badly this time. There was so much blood... I didn't even know where it was coming from. He... finished... and left. He didn't even close the door.” She breathed a small, cold laugh.

“I found I was able to get up, and I cleaned myself up as best I could – there was no running water in the flat... I shoved a few things in a case, and left down the back stairs of the building. I made it to Mac's flat – she was there studying on a visa – before passing out.” There was a long pause, as she traced the tendons on the backs of Jack's large hands. 

“Apparently he used a paintbrush handle, or maybe a ruler... Mac couldn't tell. It was bad, apparently. I stayed with Mac and her roommate Liane for three weeks, frightened every minute that René would break down the door to finish what he started. The worst part was that I was equally afraid he wouldn't. I missed him. Horrifying, isn't it,” she said with a little self-deprecating shrug. 

“But you left, Phryne. You saved yourself.”

She gave a small nod.

“I wasn't sure there was a self left to save. I was a shell, a hollow paper shape of a person. When I was able, I went to England. Mac bought my ticket, and I never went back.”

Jack was struck for a moment with the irony of Phryne leaving René to go back to her father.

“When I was on the ferry from Calais to Dover, I braved the wind on deck at some point, and just off the port side there was a small flock of gannets. They were so beautiful, Jack, like Chinese brush paintings come to life, dancing around each other in the air. They'd make huge, long swoops down to the water, then they'd dive in like missiles. Best of all, they were perfectly, absolutely free. They could go where they pleased: air, water, land; no tether, no permission required. And I decided there, on that deck, I would never, never be controlled again. I would never let anyone get close enough to me to hurt me again. Not like that, not ever. I needed to be everything and anything I wanted, and I needed to keep myself safe because it was the only way I could live. And I had to live, Jack. I had to live for me, for Janey, for all those boys in the war...”

The tears that trailed down her cheeks were dropping onto her black trousers, making shining dots on her thighs, but her voice was steady. 

“I was never again going to have to ask permission to act, never again going to live in fear. I could live without love, I decided. I just couldn't live without myself.”

They sat in silence, the strange intimacy of their entwined hands not occurring to either of them. As he listened to her breathing slow, Jack tried to marshal his emotions into thoughts, his thoughts into words. 

He'd had no idea; not really. He'd known she'd been hurt, known René had been cruel. But this... this was a level of horror, a degree of trauma he couldn't imagine and could barely stomach. He became aware of his own hands, having wrapped around hers, and wondered fleetingly if it was unwelcome. 

What would she welcome, now, from him? How did he, just a man, just a friend, just Jack, respond? He could barely summon sound, much less sense.

Phryne took a slow, deep breath, and bit her lip. Jack was so quiet. She blinked, determined not to start crying again. She'd known this was a risk, but it had been one she couldn't avoid any longer. If it was too much for him, she'd have to accept that.

Funny, she thought, I don't know that I've ever had as close a friend as Jack. 

Not since Janey.

There was Mac, of course, with whom she could talk about anything, admit anything, do more or less anything. But Jack was different. A tiny voice in her head shouted, “Perhaps he is different from other friends, because he isn't just a friend.”

She knew this voice well (curiously, it often sounded like Mac...) and was expert at ignoring it. Until today. 

In his office, after her inglorious rescue, she'd realized they were at a crossroads. But rather than excite her, as it might have, she'd found she was just desperately sad, virtually certain that the next step she had to take would be the thing that pushed Jack into the place every other decent man would need to go. 

_I'm sorry for you. I'll protect you. I will be careful with you._

_I pity you._

The fear was so deep it made her cold: that Jack would no longer see _her_ , he'd see her wounds, her scars, even her triumph, but he'd see it every time he looked at her, and it would blind him to her light. And she knew that was something she could not bear.

She swallowed, and tried to focus on Jack's warm hands, firmly wrapped around her own. She felt panic start to creep under her skin, cold and desperate. She wasn't ready to lose him. She'd done the only thing she could, hadn't she? Whatever they had become to each other, whatever their strange path had seemed to be leading to, this was a door they'd had to go through. The fact that it might be the last threshold they crossed together was suddenly more than she could take.

“Jack-”

“Phryne-”

Their voices broke raw over each other, and their eyes met at the clash. Her brow was lined and her eyes, stormy and dark, betrayed her still body. Jack spoke finally, his voice as deep as she'd ever heard it.

“Thank you.” He looked down at their hands, his thumb unable to stop its slow exploration of the back of her palm. “Thank you. For telling me. For trusting me.” He paused.

“There are things in my life, my past, I haven't told anyone. I.... wounds that need to be kept close, kept closed.” His lips settled into a grim line, and he gave the merest hint of a nod. “What you went through... What he did to you... I don't have words, Phryne.” Now his head moved slightly, barely, side to side, and her heart seized at his candour, even as she dreaded what may come next.

“You are without a doubt, the strongest, the most magnificent person I have ever known. God, Phryne, you are... blinding. How you managed to keep your heart intact, I can't imagine. But you did. And I am a different man because of it. A better one.”

She looked up at Jack's solemn face, and saw silent tears in his blue eyes. 

“I am better with you. In my life, and in my work. And I would give you everything I have, everything I am. If you wanted it. And if you don't, you have earned every right on earth to hold on to whatever part of your heart you need to. To take or leave everything else. I'll be your friend either way.”

Jack blinked a few times to collect himself and stilled his hands. He felt raw and shaken, but he'd seen no reason not to lay his heart out for her. After all, what had her story been but her doing the same for him. It wasn't the least he could do; it was the most. It was, without question, his most precious secret; he loved her. He imagined she knew, imagined it wasn't much welcome, but it was his truth, and he could offer it to her as she'd offered him hers. 

Now, as he sat more closely, more intimately with her than he could ever remember doing, he wondered sadly at the likelihood that it was an ending, of sorts. He had meant it, when he'd said he'd be her friend. But how they would go forward, now that they'd both been so exposed, he didn't know; it wasn't possible for it to be the same. Perhaps they'd slip away from each other; perhaps even quickly. The thought made him want to reach for her, pulling her to his chest and burying his face in her hair. But if he never got the chance to do that, he was still a richer man. And so he breathed, to try to quiet the blood hammering in his ears, and wondered if this might be his last night in her parlour.

Her words, when she finally spoke down to her chest, were so quiet, he almost didn't hear them.

“How, Jack Robinson, how do you do that?”

He frowned and met her eyes.

“How do you always know what to say? Even as I spoke, I imagined a thousand different ways you would respond, and I feared all of them. It devastated me, but I saw the whole thing, and it ended... it ended badly. And then you sit there, and listen, and when you speak, you manage to find the one thing to say to make the knot in my chest disappear, to make the whole world look green and soft again. I don't-”

Jack's lips descended on hers swiftly and softly, his hand releasing hers to rise and bury itself in her thick hair. It was a kiss filled with tenderness, and love, and all the fear they'd both been holding. When they pulled back it was only enough to rest their foreheads together. Phryne's hand lay against the slight roughness of Jack's cheek, and his large hand swept under her jaw to caress her lips with his thumb.

“I'm-” Jack began, but she interrupted him instantly.

“No. No apologies. You know I don't do anything – or let anything be done to me, that I don't want, Jack. You have nothing to apo-”

“I'm in love with you.”

“Oh...” Phryne raised her head to look at him. 

“You don't have to say it, Phryne, you don't have to say anything.”

She pressed her lips softly against his.

“I know.” She reached one hand around him to settle on the back of his head, her fingers drawing slowly through the fine short hairs. A furrow appeared between his brows.

“Jack, I didn't call you today about the docks because I didn't want to face where we were. I think I knew if I did, we might lose everything, and I couldn't bear that. But when you called me on it, when I saw how much I'd hurt you.... I knew I couldn't put it off any longer. 

“This, you, us... I've hoped for so long, I think, but I was so scared it was going to fall apart, because of me. I didn't know if I could do it. I didn't know if I could... If I could love you.”

Jack's felt a shock to his core like an explosion; for a moment he was deaf and blind. 

“Love me?” His voice cracked. 

Her fingers moved back to his face, tracing the lines on his brow, and the angles of his cheeks, the deep indent above his lips. 

“Love you. I do, of course. Terrifyingly.”

Jack moved to speak, and she knew from the urgency in his eyes he was going to reassure her, to tell her she never had anything to fear from him.

“Jack, you don't scare me.” Her little smile let him sit back, his hand coming to rest on hers again.

“ _I_ scare me. I don't know if I know how to love someone like you, someone good, someone whose strength is in goodness and honour.”

“Phryne?”

She looked up at him, a little perplexed.

“Yes...”

“Just let me in. Let me be beside you... When I'm not two steps behind, that is. Let me love you.”

Her eyes suddenly welled with tears, and she choked out a laughing sob. Jack smiled tenderly, his head tilted to the side.

“That's all?” she said.

“That's all.”

She looked at him, a familiar sparkle back in her eyes, and nodded. 

“Alright, Jack Robinson.” 

She leaned forward and kissed him, her lips hovering on his before opening slightly and welcoming his tongue. A spark of desire flashed from her lips to behind her eyes and travelled down the length of her body, and she pressed herself against Jack's chest. 

Jack fell into her kiss and felt the room fall away around him. He held her head in his large hand, and felt everything in the world that wasn't her warm, wet mouth, her velvet lips, disappear. Her tongue swirled around his own, and he felt a shudder of arousal as she took his bottom lip between her teeth.

“Is this real?” he whispered against her mouth.

“Dear god I hope so...” 

He felt her grin on his lips, and chuckled, a low rumbling sound she felt in her chest. She kissed him deeply, feeling his arms wrap around her back and gently pull her onto his lap. She shifted a little to protect her ribs before resting her head on his shoulder. 

Phryne sighed.

“Thank you.” 

He tilted his head down to look at her.

“For what? I haven't done anything. Well, I scolded you, but that's nothing new...” The corner of his mouth turned up in a familiar grin.

She arched up and nipped his jaw playfully before settling back against him.

“I think I was carrying around that cage with me all these years, in a way. I promised myself I'd never let a man have power like that over me again, let anyone keep me from my self. But I did.”

His hand came up to stroke her hair, and he rested his lips on her forehead.

“I was letting what he did to me control me all these years later. It almost kept me from you.” His arms held her gently, and she burrowed against his chest, stroking over his waistcoat and shirt. Before long, the air between them changed. Phryne felt Jack's arms tighten at her back, his fingers starting to stroke up her neck. 

She whispered into his throat.

“Stay?”

Jack hummed lowly and kissed her hair. 

“I would love nothing in the world so much, _believe_ me. And I can almost guarantee that I am going to regret saying this – greatly, repeatedly, and the moment I step out the door – but ...”

“Not tonight,” said Phryne softly.

“Not tonight.”

“I won't change my mind, Jack, if that's what you're thinking. I am working with all of my faculties functioning here...”

“I do not doubt that for a moment; in fact, I'm counting on it,” he rumbled, sending a shiver through her.

“But you have had a day that would level most mere mortals, and are injured on top of it. Rest, Phryne. Let Miss Williams look after you,” Jack smiled as she wrinkled her nose. “I'll be here.”

Phryne sat up a little, her fingers coming to toy with his tie.

“Not _here_ , you won't be....”

“Soon, Miss Fisher. Try to keep me away.” The wicked glint in his eye made her giggle, and she clutched her side.

“Alright, Jack, but I'm holding you to that. Soon.... _and often_.” She punctuated her words by leaning in and taking his earlobe between her lips, suckling it strongly before giving it a sharp bite. Jack's gasp prompted a satisfied smile.

“Very. Naughty. Miss Fisher.”

“If you like, Jack. I can be a lot of things....”

She pouted as he levered her carefully off his lap, then grinned as she noticed him need to adjust his trousers.

He pulled her into his arms with a sanctioning glare and held her.

“Soon, Phryne,” he whispered, and felt her nod.

She took his hand and lead him from the parlour. The house was still, Mr. Butler and Dot apparently having retired. Jack donned his coat and hat, his eyes smiling as she reached up to adjust the angle of the brim. 

“You're sure, Jack?” Phryne blinked up at him through thick lashes, parting her lips and letting her tongue linger on one canine tooth. “You're _absolutely_ sure you won't stay?”

Jack groaned softly. He shook his head slowly back and forth as he spoke: “I'm sure.” Phryne laughed at his honesty. 

“Goodnight, Miss Fisher,” Jack brought his hands to her cheeks and kissed her deeply, the taste and scent of her nearly making him forget his noble intentions. “Get some rest. I plan to make sure you'll need it.” It was Phryne's turn to catch her breath.

They stared at each other for a moment and smiled. He crossed the threshold before turning back to her once more.

“Goodnight, Jack.” There was a world in her eyes, and Jack longed to see it. He smiled as he leaned in to kiss her again gently.

Perhaps he would, yet.


End file.
